In 1943, two British intelligence officers concoct Operation Mincemeat, wherein their plan to drop a corpse with false papers off the coast of Spain would fool Nazi spies into believing the Allied forces were planning to attack by way of Greece rather than Sicily.
In 1920s Bagheria, Giuseppe 'Peppino' Torrenuova works as a shepherd to financially help his poor family. Over the next fifty years, Giuseppe's life, as well as the life of the village, is observed. Giuseppe grows up, joins the Communist Party, marries a local girl, has children, and forges a political career for himself.
Six stories unfold in various regions, from Sicily to the northern Po Valley as American military personnel interact with a variety of Italian locals over eighteen months in the push north during the Italian Campaign of WWII as German forces retreat.
Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano's bullet-riddled corpse is found facedown in a courtyard in Castelvetrano, a handgun and rifle by his side. Local and international press descend upon the scene, hoping to crack open the true story behind the death of this young man, who, at the age of twenty-seven, had already become Italy’s most wanted criminal and celebrated hero.
While Arturo tries to gain the love of Flora, he witnesses the history of Sicily from 1969 to 1992, miraculously dodging the crimes of the Mafia and supporting as a journalist the heroic struggle of the judges and policemen who fought this infamous organization.
A veteran sergeant of World War I leads a squad in World War II, always in the company of the survivor Pvt. Griff, the writer Pvt. Zab, the Sicilian Pvt. Vinci and Pvt. Johnson, in Vichy French Africa, Sicily, D-Day at Omaha Beach, Belgium and France, and ending in a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia where they face the true horror of war.
In postwar Rome, a working-class woman dreams of a better future for herself and her daughter while facing abuse at the hands of her domineering husband. When a mysterious letter arrives, she discovers the courage to change the circumstances of her life.
In 1945, the dictator of fascist Italy and Hitler's close ally Benito Mussolini faces defeat. In a desperate attempt to avoid capture, he tries to flee the country with his lover Claretta Petacci, but Italian partisans are on their tail.
A by-the-book Captain is ordered to capture a strategic village in Italy. The Italian soldiers are willing to surrender, if they can have a festival first. The lieutenant convinces the Captain this is the only way. Because of aerial reconnaissance, they must look like they are fighting. To sort this out an intelligence officer is sent in. Meanwhile the festival gets complicated with the Mayors daughter.
Summer 1943, Piedmont, Italy. Milton loves Fulvia who plays with his love: she only likes the depth of his thought and the letters he writes to her. One year later, Milton has joined the Resistance and fights beside other partisans. He learns during a conversation that Fulvia was secretly in love with his best friend Giorgio, a partisan like him. Milton decides to go find Giorgio in the Langhe region of Italy with all its misty hills...But Giorgio has just been arrested by the Fascists.
During the Nazi occupation of 1944 Rome, Resistance leader Giorgio Manfredi is pursued by the Nazis as he seeks refuge and a means of escape.
Greek Sea, World War II. An Italian ship leaves a handful of soldiers in a little island; their mission is to spot enemy ships and to hold the island in case of attack. The village of the island seems abandoned and there isn't a single enemy in sight, so the soldiers begin to relax a little. Things change when their ship is hit and destroyed by the enemy, and the soldiers find themselves abandoned there.
The Ciraulo family lives in the miserable district of Palermo called "Zen". When one of their children dies in a shootout between mafia gangsters they receive compensation and buy a luxury black Volvo. Things go wrong when Trancredi, another son, takes the car out and damages the car door.
During the harrows of WWII, Jo, a young shepherd along with the help of the widow Horcada, helps to smuggle Jewish children across the border from southern France into Spain.
In late 1940s Italy, a mother makes the difficult decision to send her son to the north, where he catches glimpses of a new life away from poverty.
Fr. Hugh O'Flaherty is a Vatican official in 1943-45 who has been hiding downed pilots, escaped prisoners of war, and Italian resistance families. His activities become so large that the Nazis decide to assassinate him the next time he leaves the Vatican.
Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, The Monuments Men is an action drama focusing on seven over-the-hill, out-of-shape museum directors, artists, architects, curators, and art historians who went to the front lines of WWII to rescue the world’s artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and return them to their rightful owners. With the art hidden behind enemy lines, how could these guys hope to succeed?
Based on the memoirs of author Curzio Malaparte, diplomatic liaison between the Allied and Italian forces after the defeat of the Nazis in Italy, The Skin follows the collapse of Italian society under the US occupation and the desperate measures required for survival.
The true story of a British effort to trick the Germans into weakening Sicily's defenses before the 1943 attack. A dead soldier is dressed as a British officer and outfitted with faked papers showing that the Allies were intending to invade occupied Greece. His body is put into the sea where it will ultimately drift ashore and the papers be passed along to German Intelligence.
An obscure Italian magistrate suspects that a well-known industrialist commited murder, and decides to investigate him, and bring him to court, whatever it takes. But - will the magistrate have it in him to go against impossible odds, in the name of the Italian people he represents?
